


You will always, eventually, fall.

by adotham (Bates)



Series: Tumblr prompts [14]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alexander Hercules Lafayette and Henry Laurens are mentioned as well, Biphobia, Break Up, Depression, M/M, Melancholy, Transphobia, but this is all coming from his pov, internalized homophobia (+ Christianity having a cause in it), mentions of scars/blood/injury/self harm, more based upon historical John Laurens than musical John Laurens, warning for past relationship, warning for racism and homophobia as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bates/pseuds/adotham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>32. “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.” + lams</i><br/> <br/>John Laurens is moving to Geneva to finish his studies and with packing his stuff comes a sense of sadness, longing for old memories, but also one for a fresh start, a way out. A blank slate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You will always, eventually, fall.

**Author's Note:**

> warning for past relationship, internalized homophobia (+ Christianity having a cause in it), melancholy, mentions of scars/blood/injury/self harm, more based upon historical John Laurens than musical John Laurens. [to be safe; warning for racism and homophobia as well] It’s pretty disorganized, but I hope it reflects John’s thought pattern.  
> Originally posted [on tumblr](http://mriareynolds.tumblr.com/post/144468499705/jamilton-with-1-or-40-or-lams-with-32-cause-of), but this is a tweaked & longer version. c: Title comes from [this poem](http://worthystevie.tumblr.com/post/141610223307/tragedy-is-sewn-into-your-soul-darling-no) by worthystevie.

_Stones taught me to fly_

_Love taught me to lie_

_Life taught me to die_

_And it's not hard to_

_f_  
                                        _a_  
_l_  
_l_

_**Vienna Teng. Canonball** _

 

 

* * *

 

 

Today, the light doesn't filter into John Laurens's bedroom -- the curtains are shut and the door his locked. His bedroom forms a cocoon, a place of isolation. He sits with his eyes pressed firmly shut, back resting against the frame of his bed, floor hard after hours of sitting there. John's been attempting to ignore the headache that is pounding in his head and the electricity refusing to run the way it should. His chemistry is off. His axons and neurotransmitters don't work -- they're refusing to allow his brain to run the way it should.

His headphones are still blaring music at him, yet he barely registers it from the little place he carved out for himself in his thoughts. It's his stuff, all around him, packed into no more than two boxes and a suitcase. It's all of his personal possessions. Some polaroids, a few notebooks filled with blue and black ink. Some diaries, others filled with notes on things that happened, ideas for poetry he'd once had. It feels pathetic, knowing that this is all that matters to him.  _Two boxes and a suitcase_ ; the entire life he'd started building for himself in New York.

Yet, this is  _his_ room,  _his_ carpet.  _His_ bed. Each object, how insignificant it may seem to others holds a small sentimental value to him. John doesn't know if he's ready to give all of that up, even if he has no other choice at this point. Going to Geneva doesn’t allow him to bring most of it. The furniture will remain there, wait for him to come back. He knows he won't come back. It's Geneva now and then what? Settling in London, settling back at home? His true home, not the one he created when coming to study in New York.

Geneva will be a chance, he knows that. John will have a new room with a new bed, new walls. All the objects will allow him to make new memories and to rebuild his life and connections yet again. Or maybe rather  _force_ him to. 

_His mp3 player ends the previous song. John doesn’t know which one it was, but Lithium pops on._

 

In Geneva, no one will know his past, they won't know what he went through here. John hopes, with all of his might, it will be better. Maybe, if he tries hard enough, it will be a happier life one that is more comfortable for him. Henry -- his father, will still be there to keep an eye on him, to guide him in his every step. His father will be there to keep him in line and keep him going to that goal; getting his law degree  _while_ being surrounded by people that are good for him, people who will get him somewhere.

His father is doing what he thinks will keep his son content and happy, John knows that. He prefers studying medicine over studying law, but his father encouraged him to choose law regardless. Henry Laurens thinks he’ll be happier in the field, that it will offer him a certain security. John can’t find it in himself to fully blame his father for pushing him into it, even though he wants to.

_John reaches out to his mp3 player, the metal cold under his fingertips. He skips the song that is currently playing, is too worn to check which song is coming up. Nirvana – the previous song – is good any day and Lithium is a good song. In fact, John loves it. Today, it just doesn’t feel good._

 

Geneva is just a stop, a stop after New York, which in its own had been a stop after England and the first one in probably many more; it’s not the first one and it won’t be the last. In all of these instances, all of these locations, his father has never been less than vocal about how much he dislikes the people John hangs around with.

It's no surprise he wants him to find other friends. Just the other day, he'd mentioned it again, he’d pressed how good this new start would be for him.  _"Don’t get me wrong son,”_  had been his words,  _“but you have to understand what I mean when I say it would do you good to look for friends that are more suitable.”_  They still echo in his head, even now.

 _More suitable_  in Henry Laurens’s vocabulary means straighter, quieter, smarter. Friends who John can invite over when his father has politicians over without embarrassing him. Henry has always been so easily hurt in his ego. Anyone who can be a friend to his son and lift his status is welcome. People he will not see in the crowds for Black Lives Matter rallies. People who will not ask his son to join him, who will prevent him from watching the news and seeing his son in a shirt that in white lettering says _'#BLM'_.  Sometimes, it makes John feel sick. As it does today.

More specifically, his father wants him to have friends that are not named Alexander Hamilton, Lafayette or Hercules. Who are not everywhere on the spectrum. His father heard about his friends and promptly decided to classify them based upon that. Even today, John knows, the way his father interacts with them is based upon those notions.

 

 _John’s fingers tremble, his breathing is shallow. The world is spinning and he is spinning. It needs to_ stop. _Shuffle isn’t kind to him. Kina Grannis and her My Dear bring tears to his eyes after just a few seconds. It’s the song he listened to when coming to terms that he is leaving. When saying goodbye to Alexander for a final time, the way only a lover can._

 

He’ll miss them all, even if his father will not, even if his father will refuse to take of his tinted glasses and _look_. If he’d only do that, Henry would see. He would realize. His friends are more.

His father liked Alexander at first. They’d met when he was dating Eliza and for a moment, Henry had been okay with it. Some days, he still is. He knows him as _that bi kid who needs to make up his mind someday._ John has to be true; for just that statement, he’d wanted nothing but to snap at him. Needless to say, he hadn’t.

Alexander is so much more however. Alexander is snarky, a worrywart. Probably the mother of their friend group. The person to turn to when things are not great. Alexander is the guy with soft lips and gentle touches, the quiet calm when the world is too much and every sensation feels like it’s too much. The reassuring words that can make him feel warm and light; who can make him feel like he is radiating with love. Alexander who is plagued with his own mental health, who fights himself every day, but keeps working, keeps persevering. John wonders when he’ll break.

Henry knows Lafayette as that weird kid who doesn’t open their mouth and he would rather keep out of the house. The person whose identity was discarded so easily with a _‘John Laurens I have send you to school – they is a plural pronoun and that is the end of it.’_

Yet, it’s Lafayette who has grown most of their group of friends. In just the for years they’d been friends, they’d had transformed almost. From being turned in and quiet to confident in themself, to being out and knowing to an extent who they are, how they identify. From coming out with clammy hands and stuttering words, to attempting what they found comfortable – from skirts borrowed from Martha (which ended up being kind of uncomfortable to them and well, John couldn’t say he didn’t agree with them) to make up (which, admittedly, Lafayette was getting better and better at each day and more and more people get jealous at them for). They figured themselves out. Perhaps, John is the proudest of them out of all of their friends, because of how far they got. How they basically said _fuck you_ to everyone. Lafayette is still fragile, but they’re kicking and fighting. They’re getting there.

And then Hercules. Hercules whom his father never even bat an eye at. Some days, John wonders if his father even knows Hercules is a part of their group. At least he’s not saying too much bad stuff about him. It’s a small comfort.

John knows Hercules as the guy with _wicked_ sewing skills. He can turn a beat up light-weight curtain into shirts like it’s no tomorrow. He will always cherish the incredibly soft PJs he got from him for Christmas, handmade at that. Hercules who can stomach more alcohol than all of them – even if they aren’t supposed to drink it because they’re all too young – but doesn’t. Herc who is smarter and more compassionate than John had ever thought he’d be when meeting him for the first time. Herc who almost has a paternal feel to him; he never lets any of them get away with anything and still is supportive, who will not push through on things if people don’t want to talk – a quality Alexander sometimes tends to lack. But also the guy who he hopes he’ll never get in a fight with, because Hercules is strong, he can stare you down. He picks his battles, picks them in a way that he chooses not to fight them.

All people John carries in his heart. All people he’s leaving behind. All people he’ll miss terribly when the plane leaves the airport and he’ll be going to Geneva.

 

_Some days, John forgets he still has music on his mp3 player reminding him of that first kiss; Of the first time Alexander’s lips found his for the first time. Oh how good it had felt, how right, for just a moment, before the panic had set in. John knows he will never be able to listen to Damien Rice and not think of him. He should delete the songs. He really should. He can’t._

His room holds more memories than he can fathom, most of them of the past two to three years. He remembers sitting crossed legged against his bed, next to Lafayette, the both of them laughing about a movie with their eyes glued to the screen. Alexander had already been asleep and Herc was off getting them all whatever he felt like grabbing that time – it’d been Chinese take-out that time.  John remembers many things, many good things. Waking up with Alexander curled up against him, falling asleep with Alexander absently running his fingers through his hair.

God, what he remembers most is the silence that fell when he finally confessed that he possibly, maybe loved Alexander. He remembers saying; ‘ _I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified_ ’, the words being met with a tense silence. John remembers the look in Alex’s eyes and the way it tore at his heart.

When he’d said them, they’d been more than the truth. Today, they still are the truth. He’s still in love with Alexander, even though they split up and the intensity of it still scares him. He’d fallen for his best friend and despised himself for it.

Yet, what he hadn’t known at the time and still doesn’t know today, is how much of that hatred towards it comes from the fact he hadn’t accepted himself. He’d confessed at a quite possibly terrible time for him, a time in which he’d hated every inch of his soul. Being gay just added to that.

Every inch of his soul had still hated himself for being gay in the first place, for not being normal, for not being good. _His own God hated him._ Those words had been told him so many times, in sermons and Sunday school. Over and over until they were all he breathed.  _You’re dirty John Laurens._

He still hears these words run free in his mind sometimes, like a never ending chant.

And then Alexander had happened, had helped him unravel his thoughts piece by piece. Alexander had helped him unlearn the thought pattern tiny bit by tiny bit, helped him see without the knots in his thoughts. When they first got together, John was still tangled. Slowly, he realized that it could not be wrong. It could not be. Slowly, he learned to love. Slowly, they got untangled, inch by inch.

 ~~He’ll miss him.~~ He already misses him and the warmth and comfort he provided. It’ll forever be a dark mark on New York; the place where he both fell in and out of love. Except, he never really did. John is still in love with him, in a way. He still sees Alexander as the most beautiful way to ever be wrong.

 

There are bad memories associated with his room as well. He remembers cleaning blood from the floor, hiding bathroom towels. The constant smell of iron and blood in the air, even though no one else ever noticed it. He barely remembers being found semi-conscious on his bathroom floor in nothing but his underwear by Alexander and Lafayette.

John remembers explaining, to an almost completely silent room and with gauze around the cuts in his skin, that he had not meant to cut so deeply. He had not meant to almost kill himself. _He had not meant it._ None of his friends had believed him. It had been clear in the watch detail they set up in the days after the event; always making sure there was someone there. Lafayette staying over and sleeping on the ground next to him because they were convinced John himself would see sleeping on the ground as a way to punish himself. Hercules who brought stuff he’d stuffed up and brought a seam ripper for John to take pieces apart again. Alexander, who brought merely himself and his essays. They’d thought everything was a good way to distract him.

In a way, when John thinks back to those days now, he knows him swearing it was not an attempt was a cover up. Today, he knows he came so close and failed. _Failed yet again._ He’s glad he failed. He really is, because if he had passed then, he’d never gotten to experience many things, things he still loves. He’d never have gotten to know his friends so intimately, he’d never have felt so cared for.

There is the memory of his father walking in on him and Alexander kissing. There is the memory of the talk they’d had afterwards, venom and worry in his father’s tone. _“If this is your way of fitting in with your friends.” “You’re just confused son, it’s normal. It happens to a lot of guys. There was a guy in my English class…ended up marrying woman and having three beautiful children with her. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”_

The memory of telling Alexander he’s leaving and breaking up with him; seeing the pain cross his ex-lover’s face. Seeing him bite his lip, straighten his back and walk out, the door slamming as he leaves. John remembers their last conversation as a couple and bickering over who gets to pick what they’re doing on Valentines – joke’s on both of them, because they never got to celebrate together. John did. _Another bad memory_. Though he knows ice and watching a chick-flick movie with his sister can only be bad to a certain agree.

 

 _Bad._

**_Bad_ ** _._

 _B_ _a d._

 

He balls his fists, trying to keep the memories at bay. His fingers dig into his skin, his nails not digging in hard enough to cause pain, bleeding or scars. His chest feels light, almost like he’s floating and for a moment, there’s that sheer sense of _wrong_. He’s wrong, everything his wrong, there is no pain going to his brains. Chemicals run out. Brain fucked up. He.

Can’t.

Breathe.

He hears his therapist speak in the back of his mind  _‘try counting back from a number and thinking something good with them, for some people it works_ ’. He’s not one of them, but he knows he’s desperate enough to try. _Anything._

 _  
_Five.__ Alexander’s smile in the mornings when he’s not quite awake. It’s absent and dreamy, there is no trace of the burdens he carries when awake; there is no realization in them he’ll have to fight the fight another day and drag himself to school. It’s John’s favourite expression of Alex’s.

 _Four_. The worn polaroid picture of Lafayette and Martha, his sister. It’s Lafayette just a few minutes after their graduation, wearing a light face of make-up for the first time in public and looking so confident and happy – maybe mostly because they had been able to say their school goodbye – that it made Alex, Herc and him feel just a little bit happier as well. They had done an amazing job and Martha had actually laughed and _begged_ them to do hers as well. They had laughed and it had sounded so true that John hadn’t been able but to feel affection tug at his heart.

 _Three_. Seeing his youngest sister interact with a puppy for the very first time; the big grin on her face as Polly runs and yells ‘ _doggy!’_. The memory is just excited and happy enough to forget their mother’s death and how much their entire family is not doing okay, even two years after.

 _Two._ Herc’s hugs; warm and comfortable. John can only compare it to hugging a warm blanket that has just left the dryer close to your body. It’s perhaps were he feels safest.

 _One_. That one group photo they have of all four of them; each of them smiling, happy – there is no trace of unhappiness, not in the memory nor in the picture. It’s the one he keeps in his wallet like a proud father carries around the pictures of his children.

 It’s not a lot better, but he’s calmed down. It’s a start. As long as he’ll keep telling himself that, they’ll all be fine, one day. _Maybe._

 

His friends will be waiting at the airport to say goodbye to him. Even though Alexander will not want to see him, he’ll be there and hug him, tell him to have a safe flight and send something to their group chat when he lands.

Lafayette will pull him tight and they’ll press a kiss to each of his cheeks. They’ll tell him to take care and look out for himself. They’ll tell him not to forget about his friends back in New York, tell him he’ll always have a spot in their group. John knows he’ll not, pull them tight again and pretend his heart isn’t breaking.

Hercules will clasp is shoulder, pull him tight and tell him he’ll be fine. Herc will say that he’ll miss him, but that it’s alright, because he’ll make sure to stay in contact. They’ll still talk - _you can watch movies together through Skype you idiot_ – and hang out. John knows he’ll smile, nod and promise to send the ugliest fabrics back to the US. Herc will grin and promise to make him nice dress shirts out of them as long as he’ll keep updating his measurements. They’ll both laugh, half heartedly.

John, he will not be ready to leave. Their group splitting up and while the others can hang out, he’s the one who won’t come back. No matter how hard they try, their connections will crumble to dust.

 

_The music stops. John opens his eyes. The room is no longer spinning._

This was his stuff, were his memories. They’re that no longer. In five hours, he’ll be on a plane and leave everything behind. He cannot mourn them. He can’t allow himself to mourn the loss.

_Battery empty, the screen tells him, the battery icon flashing red at him. At least his isn’t the only dead battery._


End file.
